<\/p>\n
Fitting in comes at a steep cost in \u201cSlanted,\u201d a sci-fi-horror satire in which a Chinese American teen makes a Faustian bargain seeking acceptance the only way that fashion magazines, her social media algorithm and the world at large suggest she can: by becoming white. Literally. Desperate to erase her Asian features, she takes the bait when a shady cosmetic company offers the ultimate makeover. The only catch? It\u2019s irreversible. And you thought permanent eyebrows were a commitment.<\/p>\n
A few fleshy shreds of late-breaking gore eventually follow, though writer-director Amy Wang\u2019s SXSW-winning assimilation horror never cuts as deeply as it should. Still, credit the debuting feature filmmaker for venturing pretty far out there with a risky conceit in which two actresses, one Asian and the other white, play the same person while convincing us that we\u2019re watching one conflicted girl stuck in two different bodies.<\/p>\n
\u201cSlanted\u201d opens as 8-year-old Joan Huang (Kristen Cui) moves from China to wealthy suburban Georgia with her working-class parents Roger (Fang Du), a musician turned janitor, and her pragmatic mother Sofia (Vivian Wu). Scarred by the racist rejections of her white classmates on the first day of school, she\u2019s awed by the prom coronation she witnesses the same night. Almost 10 years later and torn between her Chineseness and her desire to be embraced as American, the spunky Joan (Shirley Chen, a sardonic standout in \u201cD\u00ecdi\u201d<\/a> and wonderfully vulnerable here) would do anything to be crowned prom queen, the ultimate emblem of popularity. When the mysterious Ethnos Inc. sells her on an \u201cethnic modification\u201d surgery guaranteeing a happier, whiter life, Joan eagerly signs up for the procedure that will replace her Asian identity and turn her into, well, Mckenna Grace (\u201cRegretting You\u201d).<\/p>\n What exactly is Ethnos? Call it the med spa from hell with a killer targeted marketing campaign. (Don\u2019t worry about how the fictional science works. The film certainly doesn\u2019t.) Testimonials from satisfied patients boast of improved post-op job opportunities and love lives, the idea being that erasing one\u2019s race is a shortcut to equality \u2014 as long as the default complexion is white.<\/p>\n \u201cSlanted\u201d begs comparison to the identity horrors of \u201cGet Out\u201d<\/a> and the beauty-industry carnage of \u201cThe Substance\u201d<\/a> (with a hazy nod to the prom scene in \u201cCarrie\u201d), but it\u2019s the echoes of \u201cEternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,\u201d a stated influence, that give the movie its \u201cbe careful what you wish for\u201d poignancy. When Dr. Singer (R. Keith Harris) plies Joan with promises of relief from the exhaustion of being non-white in America (\u201cIf you can\u2019t beat them, be<\/i> them\u201d), it\u2019s a sales pitch reminiscent of George S. Schuyler\u2019s 1931 novel \u201cBlack No More,\u201d about a Black man who undergoes a scientific process to turn his skin white.<\/p>\n Given the slights Joan endures while cleaning a condescending white woman\u2019s home or the way she clothespins her nose thinner and mimics Western beauty tutorials each morning before school, you wish you could assure her that comfort in her own skin will come in a few years\u2019 time. Her only real cheerleader is her confident bestie Brindha (a sparkling Maitreyi Ramakrishnan in a too-brief appearance), who offers a model of what self-love and community could look like.<\/p>\n But assimilation is both survival and validation for Joan, who returns to school as \u201cJo Hunt,\u201d now played by Grace. Cozying up to the cool kids that ignored her as an Asian girl but now offer her a seat at their \u201cMean Girls\u201d-esque lunch table, she ingratiates herself to Olivia (Amelie Zilber), the queen-bee influencer she idolizes. Her prom dreams inch closer as her lies begin to mount and her new alabaster skin starts peeling off at extremely inopportune moments.<\/p>\n The gambit of \u201cSlanted\u201d hinges on the audience accepting that Joan is still the same person when Chen hands her off to Grace midway through the film. Like John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in \u201cFace\/Off,\u201d<\/a> the actors tag team the lead role seamlessly. Where Chen\u2019s Joan runs on a naive, frantic despair, Grace carries heavy emotions and shame in her eyes, creating an especially loaded chemistry with Du and Wu, all three excellent (Grace also delivers a portion of her dialogue in Mandarin).<\/p>\n